What if everything you've been taught about love is wrong??

In her book, The Case for Falling in Love, Dr. Mari Ruti explains why love should not be considered a game and how most failed relationships are not because you did something wrong!

In The Case for Falling in Love, University professor, now mainstream author, Mari Ruti teaches that women ought to ignore popular self-help wisdom on relationships, romance, and men in order to get the most out of love.

CommitmentNow.com:  What inspired you to write The Case for Falling in Love: Why We Can't Master the Madness of Love – and Why That's the Best Part?

Mari Ruti, Ph..D.: As a university professor, I had written quite a bit about relationships from a more academic perspective. And when I was at Harvard, I taught a course on love for a few years. But what ultimately pushed me to write this book – which is my first one aimed at the general reading public – was that I wanted to offer an alternative to what is currently available on the self-help shelf. I find much of the relationship advice aimed at women both overly simplistic and demoralizing. Many relationship guides imply that women aren't good enough as they are – that the only way to succeed in romance is to learn the right “rules” for catching a man. Women are asked to approach their love lives with the strategic acumen of a five-star general, and when things don't work out, supposedly it's because they didn't play “the game” correctly. What's even worse is that they are trained to think of men as an alien species that can only be whipped into submission through manipulation.

I think that this type of advice is doing a lot more harm than good because 1) love is not a game; it's not meant to be controlled, and 2) men and women are a lot more alike than many of our self-help gurus would like us to believe. I'm quite tired of the Mars/Venus-mentality that has dominated the self-help industry in recent decades because I don't think that it accurately captures the complexities of contemporary romance – at least not for a lot of younger men and women. And, frankly, I wonder about the motivations of self-help authors who are trying to sell us a caveman version of masculinity (“men are hunters,” “men are wired to cheat,” “men don't understand emotions,” “men will disappoint you,” “it's all about the male ego,” etc.). Why would any woman want to date a guy like this? And why should women revert to a 1950s version of femininity in their relationships when the rest of their lives is taking place in the 21st century? In short, I wanted to offer something more “real” - something that would speak to readers who no longer recognize themselves in the traditional gender and relationship models that are so popular among self-help authors.  

CommitmentNow.com:  Who should read The Case for Falling in Love?

Mari:  1. Women (and men) who are tired of overly simplistic relationship advice based on “rules,” “steps,” or “strategies” - that is, readers who realize that love is too complicated to be disciplined into a “program” of some kind.

2. Readers who are tired of thinking about men and women in overly simplistic gender binaries (men this, women that) – that is, folks who realize that human beings are complex creatures and that the more stereotypical our thinking about men and women, the less effectively we are able to deal with this complexity.

3. Readers who have had their hearts broken and who are looking for a way to pick up the pieces and go on with their lives.

CommitmentNow.com:  There are so many relationship guides out there. How is The Case for Falling in Love different from the others?

Mari:  I would say that besides the key idea that love is not a game, the biggest difference is that I emphasize that stereotypical thinking about men and women can only damage our love lives. We live in a society that is doing its best to move away from stereotypes when it comes to other issues, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, social class, etc. This is for a good reason: we know that stereotypes limit our thinking and can be extremely hurtful. Why, then, are our self-help authors actively encouraging stereotypical thinking when it comes to men and women? What can we possibly gain from reducing men and women to one-dimensional Ken and Barbie dolls that don't reflect the nuances of lived experience? The more we think in terms of rigid gender binaries (men X, women Y), the less we are able to appreciate the person in front of us. Stereotypes blind us to the uniqueness of our partner, and this cannot possibly be good for relationships. This is why my advice is to drop the “battle of the sexes”-mentality perpetuated by our self-help culture. I believe that it's only when we start thinking of our partners as human beings with complex personal histories that we can begin to love authentically.

CommitmentNow.com:  At the beginning of each chapter, you have a myth and a fact that contradicts the myth. For example, in Chapter 2 the myth is “Men prefer women who let them take the lead” and the fact is “Many quality men are looking for an equal relationship with a competent and independent woman.” How do myths such as these impact relationships?

Mari:  As I said above, myths about men and women oversimplify our thinking about romance to the point that we lose our ability to fully see, let alone appreciate, our partner. For instance, the so-called “male psyche” is a cultural myth about men that makes it harder for women to relate to men as fellow human beings with all-too-human problems and vulnerabilities. It's our lot as humans to tackle a lot of challenges and difficult passages. We are all fragile in one way or another. The myth of the “male psyche” is not going to get us very far in trying to meet that fragility in a meaningful way.

What's more, myths about what “men really want” and “what women should do to please men” force women to bend over backwards in an effort to meet cultural ideals that may have nothing to do with who they actually are. I can honestly say that 99% of the (straight) men I know want an equal relationship with a competent and intelligent woman. Why, then, are some of our self-help authors trying to convince us otherwise? I know that there are still some cavemen out there; I know it's easy enough to find men who don't respect women. But why should such men be taken as the norm? They are by no means the only model of masculinity available to us these days. There are a lot of genuinely respectful men in the world who make wonderful and considerate partners. This is why I don't understand the self-help obsession of trying to teach women how to “handle” difficult men who can't shed the “boys will be boys”-mentality that has for centuries complicated the lives of women in our society. How can this possibly help women?

CommitmentNow.com:  So many of us are taught to play hard to get. How does this undermine a woman's attempts at participating in a healthy romantic relationship?

Mari:  One of the obvious problems with playing hard to get is that if you want to stay with your boyfriend, eventually you'll have to make yourself available; you can't play hard to get indefinitely. If a man is with you solely because of the thrill of the chase – because he likes the challenge – he's unlikely to stick around once you make yourself available. So why go down that road to begin with? Women are told that playing hard to get increases their value. But I think that often women play hard to get because they are not sure of their value. If you're truly confident, you'll know that you're good enough, and you'll expect your partner to recognize that. And, really, what are we? 15 years old? I can't imagine a  mature man – that is, a man worth dating – dumping a woman just because she returns his phone calls. Shouldn't he be with you because he likes you? The more unavailable you make yourself, the less likely it is that he is “in” it for you for the simple reason that he won't really know you.

CommitmentNow.com:  Can women who already have romantic partners benefit from reading The Case for Falling in Love?

Mari:  I think so. Because I don't believe that we can stage-manage our relationships to some ideal outcome, the book is more a general philosophy of love than a “how-to” guide. It's meant to make you more thoughtful about love and relating. And it's meant to allow you to appreciate the ups and downs of relationships so that you don't run for cover the minute something goes wrong. In addition, I spend quite a bit of time on the fact that many of us tend to repeat self-undermining or painful patterns in our relationships. I think everyone – those who are already coupled up as well as those still looking – could benefit from having some insight into why certain emotional scenarios keep surfacing and how we might go about breaking them.

CommitmentNow.com:  Do men and women really want different things from a relationship?

Mari:  By now, it should be clear that I don't think that men and women are, at bottom, that different. Men and women have been socialized differently, of course, and they have also often been culturally conditioned to want different things. But when you boil human life down to the basics, I think that men and women want many of the same things from relationships: love, passion, companionship, a deep and meaningful connection with someone they trust, etc. A given man and a given women in a given relationship might of course want very different things. This is one reason relationships can be so frustrating. But I don't think we can generalize across the genders so that all men want X and all women want Y. Life is just not that simple. People are not that simple. The difference between two men might be much bigger than the difference between one of these men and many women. Some men want a lot of intimacy; some are afraid of it. Likewise for women. I know we are conditioned to think that women want intimacy more than men. But is this always the case? Personally, I know a lot of women who are terrified of intimacy and quite a few men who crave it to the point of desperation. 

CommitmentNow.com:  What advice do you have for women who have not been lucky in love?

Mari:  I hate the idea of women sitting around and blaming themselves for relationship failures (if I had only done X, etc.). This is why I stress in my book that most times when love doesn't work out, it's not because you did something wrong; it's not because you botched your game. It's because love is inherently fickle and capricious. Often it's not meant to succeed in the long run. Many people in happy relationships had to go through a whole slew of unhappy ones first. So my advice would be to think of love's failures as an important part of romance rather than as its antithesis. I also think that love's trials often teach us a great deal about ourselves and our strengths, so that no matter how heartbroken we may feel, eventually we may come to appreciate the wisdom we gain from painful experiences. If we are to truly honor the “soul” of love, we must understand that its mission may be more panoramic, more mysterious, than making us happy. Love initiates us to frequencies of human experience that we might never be able to access otherwise. Deep sadness or even despair might be among these, and without such experiences, we might never realize our full humanity; we might never fully come to our own as individuals. And it may well be that our own suffering makes us more compassionate towards the suffering of others. So, I would say: don't try to banish suffering; sit with it until gives you something in return.

Mari Ruti holds degrees from Brown (B.A.), the University of Paris (DEA), and Harvard (M.A. Sociology; M.A. Comparative Literature; Ph.D. Comparative Literature). She is currently Associate Professor of Criti-cal Theory at the University of Toronto, where she teaches contemporary theory and criticism, psycho-analysis, continental philosophy, phenomenology, poststructuralism, and gender and sexuality studies. Visit her at www.mariruti.com.

To purchase The Case for Falling in Love, click here.